Terrorism Act 2000 (Video Recording with Sound of Interviews and Associated Code of Practice) (Northern Ireland) Order 2020

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Friday 10th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the content of this order is important, in that the application of modern technology to the conduct of police interviews is part of the criminal justice system. This is, of course, uncontroversial; no one is going to criticise the use of digital technology in this context. However, reading the order and the background to it, what leapt out at me was the point that the noble Viscount made at the outset, which is that it should be 2020 when we are making this change. That struck me as odd when I first looked at the order; he thought it was almost amusing that we were talking about the conduct of interviews by tape from the 1960s and 1970s. The notes on the background of this order raise a point of some concern. Paragraph 7.2 on the policy background says:

“The equivalent Code of Practice for video recording with sound for police in England and Wales and Scotland was updated in 2012. The current Code of Practice for Northern Ireland came into operation in 2003”.


So there were nine years between those two, and a further eight years since 2012, where there have been failures to update these provisions in respect of Northern Ireland.

The two points that come out of this clearly are, first, that that is obviously unacceptable. How did we in Parliament and the Northern Ireland Office continue for eight years after the equivalent updating of the code in England, Wales and Scotland, and 17 years after the original code came into practice, in respect of technology that has been available for that whole period? That is obviously unsatisfactory and could lead—and maybe has led—to miscarriages of justice, because old-fashioned tape corrupts and deteriorates in a way that modern digital recordings, with the storage we have talked about, do not.

It raises a second concern, which I wonder if the noble Viscount could address: are there other areas of police practice in Northern Ireland which are similarly antiquated by reason of the regulations that govern them? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, referred to all the codes relating to the conduct of interviews and investigations since the Birmingham Six. I hope the noble Viscount can address, by summing up or writing to us, whether other areas of police practice and regulation are governed by codes of practice and procedure more antiquated than those that apply in England and Wales, simply by failure to modernise the law. It is our duty as parliamentarians to ask that question, and the Government’s to give us a clear explanation of whether there are such areas. If there are, the obvious follow-up question is: should they not be modernised too, and a great deal more quickly than this order?